Wace
Wace (pronounced [ vas ] ) (* 1110, † after 1174 ) ( südnormannisch and French) and Robert Wace also called Guace and Gaice, was a Norman poet of the court of the English King Henry II and his wife Eleanor was close to Aquitaine. Its importance lies in the mediation of the Arthurian material from Latin sources of the vernacular ( Norman patois ) or French-language literature (see Chrétien de Troyes ).
Wace was from the Channel Island of Jersey, which occupies a special position as Kronbesitz the British Crown today. He trained as a cleric on the mainland in Caen, a major city of the Duchy of Normandy, and later studied temporarily in the French heartland ( Ile de France). His writing career began in 1130 in Caen; he wrote in Norman scripta, that is a kind of French, which was influenced by the Norman dialect. His audience were thus particularly noble laymen.
He began as a poet of legends of saints, three of which have been preserved: the life of Saint Margaret (c. 1130), the life of St. Nicholas ( 1150 ) and La conception de Notre Dame ( " Immaculate Conception ", ca 1130-1140 ).
Roman de Brut
Wace's most important work was the Roman de Brut. Already 1135-1140 he might have come with the Latin -speaking Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain ) into contact Geoffrey of Monmouth had dedicated to the English governor in Caen, Robert of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of Henry I of England. Shortly after 1150 Wace began with the transfer of the Historia into French and apparently even traveled to England to become familiar with its topography.
1155 its transmission in the form of a rhyming chronicle was completed. She is known as the Roman de Brut ( Brut or short ), covers 15,000 octosyllabic pairs rhyming verses and is preserved in about 32 complete or fragmentary manuscript copies. This is quite a high number, and speaks a great success.
The brood includes the history of Britain / England at the Troy myth, similar to French chroniclers did with the history of the Frankish Empire. The display ranges from the arrival of a " Brutus ", an alleged great-grandson of Aeneas escaped from Troy, on the island of the Roman time to loss of British rule to the Anglo-Saxons. The highlight of the " British " history is the reign of King Arthur. This pseudohistoriographische scaffolding took Wace its Latin original. But his portrayal takes beyond several freedoms. He enriched the Arthurian story of fabulous descriptions, among other things, the idea of the round table ( table ronde, round table ), excluding the rank disputes, and the myth of the Rapture Arthur to Avalon.
Neither the Historia nor Wace's Brut Geoffrey can be considered as works of history in the modern sense. The term novel also does not indicate the genre of the novel in the later sense, but a work that was written in Roman (French ) language, ie, not in Latin, which the learned seal still dominated in 1150.
Was Wace dedicated his work of Queen Eleanor, whose husband Henry II just ( 1154 ) became King of England after several years of succession disputes had preceded.
The English ( -Norman ) rulers, beside their neighbors, the King of France, did not want to feel as history and traditions loosely upstarts, had for some time shown a strong interest in a ' national ' history - both the Norman and the British (see William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Geffrey Gaimar ). Wace gained a comfortable position as a chronicler of the English court with this highly welcome contribution to the Transfiguration Britain for several years. Between 1165 and 1169 Henry gave him a benefice as canon in the Norman Bayeux.
The Roman de Brut in turn was the basis for Layamons Brut, a alliteratives poem on Middle English.
Roman de Rou
In a document of 1174 Wace is as Wascius canonicus mentioned again. Year of his death, sometime after 1174 is unknown.